An alleged case of some extremely bad judgment has resulted in a lawsuit, as the parents of two high school girls are claiming that a security guard at the Aspira Early College High School on Chicago's northwest side strip searched their daughters (along with another girl who is not a part of the lawsuit) looking for a wayward lighter. The female guard, an off duty Chicago police officer, is accused of searching under the girls' shirts with her hands, then forcing the girls to remove their pants and underwear and "squat and cough" in trying to find the contraband, which she suspected the girls of using to start a fire in the boys' bathroom. more ›

On Tuesday, when President-Elect Obama announced that Chicago Public Schools CEO Arne Duncan was being nominated as Education Secretary, one of the many praises Obama lavished on Duncan was that he "championed good charter schools, even when it was controversial." It appears that charter schools are still controversial, as a group of teachers, parents, and students turned out at a Chicago Board of Education meeting yesterday to express their disappointment with the charter school program and how they are "destroying neighborhood schools." more ›